My main coverage area as an Analyst is focusing on Online Communities for Interactive Marketers, I was formerly an enterprise intranet manager at Hitachi Data Systems, so I see where this is heading.
I realize that we’re just at the early days, as many of these systems are deployed by marketing units with little interaction or support from IT. In many cases users are forced to create a new user ID, as these systems are not tied to existing enterprise software.
Thinking towards the future, I realize how important it will be for IT departments to think holistically about social media, especially large areas of customer and prospect congregation. For many marketers, they are graded (paid) based upon the amount of qualified leads that are generated for their efforts, online communities, blogs, and other tools are examples of this. I can already imagine the big consulting shops moving into Fortune 5000 companies with another Enterprise Resource Planning for Social Media projects underway (ERP-SM).
Exactly what would success look like? For one, brands will be able to track, manage, and monitor who enters the community, determine if they are a prospect, customer, partner, or even inactive. Secondly, brands will be able to develop intelligence on how effective communities are for bringing customers closer such as integrating existing social networks like LinkedIn to the corporate intranet. In a theoretical sense, brands could determine which customers have the best reputation, and how to keep and reward them. But perhaps, most importantly, customer experience will improve as companies now have a better understanding of them throughout their life cycle –and beyond.
Caveat: The key to success isn’t just about building systems to ‘capture’ customer registrations and information, it’s about building real relationships empowered by these tools. Any corporation who attempts to enter social media just for the sake of holistic data, or for lead generation only will fail –and perhaps become a case study analysts tout in our powerpoint decks. First recognize the power shift, then understand how this is different that other marketing activities.
The following is a list of companies or vendors that are starting to tie their social media software into CRM systems:
Leverage Software/SalesForce
CEO of Leverage Systems proclaims: mwalsh Leverage Software is integrated with Salesforce.com – has been for 2 years. The integration is currently light, but will deepen. June 3, 2008SalesForce for Dell/Starbucks?
SalesForce offers IdeaExchange, which powers Dell Ideastorm and My StarbucksIdeas. Being that they are a CRM software vendor that now offers community insight tools, I can only assume that their data is being shared. this is just my assumption, they have not confirmed this for me. June 3, 2008Hivelive for Serena
Serena’s Mashup Exchange (powered by HiveLive) is an online customer community that is being integrated with lead/CRM systems. Specifically, HiveLive’s LiveConnect Community Platform is integrated with MarketBright’s lead management system and Salesforce.com. Submitted, June 3, 2008 by HiveLive CEO John Kembel via commentsSubmit in comments, provide links to qualify
Hoping to see an example of a company that has automated it’s community tools to tie with it’s CRM tools, I’m expecting you to link to a credible source of information, or identify yourself as an employee of a vendor or client. Leave a comment below, or email me if you want to stay confidential or anonymous.
At some point when this list becomes to difficult to manage, or this goes mainstream, we’ll just have to read the comments. If you know of a company that has integrated it’s social media data with a CRM system, please leave a comment.
Blackbaud has a long focus on CRM with The Raiser’s Edge, and now has the social networking piece with their white label NetCommunity product. The value proposition is that these two systems are linked so closely together.
I have to disagree with Jaime re: BlackBaud and their two products. Raiser’s Edge is a CRM product and being connected to Netcommunity does not automatically mean the systems are sharing the right amount of data, or any data. There are several traditional AMS (association management software) vendors that have moved online and have built data silos with little tracking capabilities. However, there is some hope, Kintera has agreed to merge with Blackbaud, maybe the two can create the right product. But who knows.
Hi Jeremiah, this is Hilary from Lithium. Great topic.
This is a slightly different take, but I’d like to add an example of how community + CRM = better customer service. This kind of integration benefits both customers and those in the company that serve/support them. How? Customers can search once and get combined results from forum posts and the company’s knowledgebase. And customers are more likely to get their questions answered if questions posted on forums are escalated to customer support when not answered in a set timeframe. For customer support agents, they get a (closer to) 360-degree view of the customer if forum activity is integrated into their CRM desktop.
Lithium is doing this today with its integration with RightNow. Logitech is a great example. Check out a combined search results example (I searched on “installation”) on their public site:
http://logitech-en-amr.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/logitech_en_amr.cfg/php/enduser/std_alp.php?p_sid=J9UK5o5j&p_lva=&p_li=&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_page=1&p_cv=&p_pv=&p_prods=0&p_cats=&p_hidden_prods=&prod_lvl1=0&p_search_text=installation&p_new_search=1
I think there are a lot of reasons CRM and Social Media fit together; I think there are better examples of vendors that what is listed above. In any case most integration needs to be custom as the profile questions need to be added in the CRM system to line things up properly; most Social Networking vendors have robust API’s to do this. I highly doubt we will see an out of box integration soon that will fit all needs. As a former Leverage client the description of “light integration” is a bit of an understatement (actually you could describe the rest of their product the same way;-)
Yeah… take a look at http://www.octopuscity.com. They have a great interface between social networking and CRM, and it’s free (up to a certain number of contacts). I like the way they’ve put it together too… very intuitive.
wapr.com is exactly doing the same. outside, inside and across the divide 🙂
wapr.com is exactly doing the same. outside, inside and across the divide 🙂